


You Can't Fix This

by TUNiU



Series: Victor [4]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, POV Second Person, uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 02:51:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18379436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: Victor is so proud of the fact that Nathan got out of the treasure hunting business, so of course he's upset that Sam will drag him back in all for the sake of Henry Avery's treasure.





	You Can't Fix This

For twenty years, Nate wears Francis Drake's ring round his neck. In that time, the ring leads to two forgotten secrets, the truths about both El Dorado and Ubar - the Atlantis of the Sands. But the real treasure is Nate himself, and the day he loses the ring to Marlowe's desert grave, is the day he seems to unburden himself of his chosen legacy. You watch him reconcile with Elena Fisher. You watch as he pieces back together the shattered bits of his marriage. The pieces that he made break when he became so focused on the treasure he hadn’t thought of for twenty years, though he wore that ring every day.

Now, you haven't seen Nate in two years. Not since he and Elena settled down in New Orleans. Nate works marine salvage, and still sends you kitchy postcards, (they're all Mardi Gras themed, but what else can you expect from the tourist shops of Nawlins.) You tell yourself it’s better this way. You're so goddamn proud of him. He did something you never will. You're almost seventy years old and still chasing the big one, the score to end all scores. You know it will never happen, you know it will kill you. It kills everyone in the end. It's a young man's game, and you are not, haven't been since before you met Nate. But back then, age gave you respectability and a reputation, you were reliable to your clients. Now you're outdated, now you have old notebooks filled with the names and numbers of trusted colleagues who have died in the business. As the years go by, it seems more and more often you’re toasting a drink in honor of a friend who died for the score. There is always another last big score and no shortage of aging treasure seekers desperate to find it.

But Nate got out without ever getting that big score. Oh, all those little trinkets he was always finding in the underbrush and up strange rooftops added up though. He and Elena own their own house. For a man like you, it would be a burden, something to tie you to a single place, something to make you trackable, but that's nothing to scoff at for a man was was once a street urchin.

It's been two years and the small part of you that still has nightmares where you watch Nate die hopes he never calls you for another treasure hunt, hopes you never get a call from a trusted source telling you to make a toast for the great Nathan Drake: “he died doing what he loved.” So you don’t call him, except on holidays. You dare not tempt him away from the life he made for himself. He got out and you’re going to make sure he stays out. He deserves his happiness.

So of course he calls you.

You hear his voice shake on the phone while he tells you his brother Sam is alive and standing in front of him. Sam who died 15 years ago in a Panamanian jail, who died in a hail of bullets, whose hand slipped through Nate’s. (Nate is never the same after Sam's death). Now Nate is reeling off details about some con involving an auction house and a Saint Dismas cross, the same kind of cross Sam died for, like no time has passed, like Nate doesn't have a wife and a good life waiting for him, like he’s still that 24 year old man who left for Panama on the cusp of finding the greatest pirate treasure of all time.

You try to tell him it feels hinky, try to beg him to do more research before leaping up to Sam's defense. Of course he doesn't. He let Sam down once before, (after Sam got left behind, after Nate spent so much time and money trying to get him back, and then, when he realized the futility, just trying to retrieve his body from the jail...). You can hear it in his voice, there is no way Nate will back down from anything that will save Sam now. And Sam has the gall to tell you to your face that there is nothing forcing Nate into this course of action, asks if you see a gun to his head making him make these choices. But the gun is pointed at Sam.  You want to say screw Alcazar's money. It wouldn't be the first time you've gambled with a bad man's good will and won. You never did pay back Gabriel Roman's money because the debt he had on you died with him. Maybe you can convince Nate and Sam to play for time, and maybe Alcazar tracks Sam down for his money, and maybe Alcazar gets killed looking for Avery's treasure. 

There are a lot of maybes in life and not paying back bad men has always been one of them, sometimes it turns out okay. 

* * *

You don’t know Sam is lying about Hector Alcazar’s death threats, not yet, but you will, after everything with Shoreline and Rafe and nearly dying yourself. After coming back from Libertalia, after Nate and Elena leave in a cab, when you accept Sam’s offer to be your business partner, you take him aside, put your hand around his shoulder to pull him in really friendly like. You whisper to his face very strong words, words that include threats of violence and all the swift retribution that Victor Goddamn Sullivan can bring down upon his head. (God himself would quake at your words).

* * *

For now, all you can see is a young Nate showing up at your doorstep to tell you Sam didn’t survive the prison escape. (You will see that same expression on his face ten years later, when he tells you he saw you die in Ubar). You want to scream at Sam, tell him how his death broke something in Nate, that he is just now crawling out from under. You want to shake him, demand to know how dare he disturb his brother’s good life. Later, when Elena unexpectedly shows up, (Nate lies to her about the trip, and he lies to you about her being okay with the trip. He lied to you.) a small treacherous part of you thinks Nate would have been better off never knowing Sam lived. That’s the part of you that separates Nate from all your other contacts and friends in the business. There’s Nate, and there’s everyone else, and if Nate is in danger, screw everyone else. (Right now, Sam is the danger.) You will never lose a minute’s sleep over the fact you were one second away from blowing Charlie Cutter’s brains out. You would have shot a trusted colleague like a rabid dog if he hadn’t stopped strangling Nate, the fact he was hallucinating be damned.

Nate lies to Elena when he tells her he’s in Malaysia. He lies to you when he says Elena wishes you all well. Sam lies to Nate when he tells him the story of Hector Alcazar. As you watch Nate focus on finding Libertalia, to the detriment of his marriage, all you can do is hope that Nate still has his good life with his good wife to come back to, when he finally realizes just what he is about to lose to the lies and the greatest pirate city of all time.  

(You’re so goddamn proud he got out of the business.)

(But there is always one last big score.)

(Libertalia is a lie.)

**Author's Note:**

> This one was also so difficult to write. UC4 had me wondering just why Nathan hadn't spoken to Sully in two years. to me, it drew a parallel to the relationship of Bobby and Dean, in the year between season 5 and 6 of Supernatural. Bobby purposely didn't tell Dean that Sam was back because Dean got out of the hunting business and he had a happy life with his girlfriend. Bobby was proud of Dean for getting out of that life. UC4 also made me think of the Neal Caffrey relationships in White Collar, and how there is always one last big score for ageing con men. I like to think Sully knew Nate was made for more than just living and dying for the treasure.


End file.
